Adam Boulton is shocked

Big Adam Boulton, with more chins than the Michelin man, is a testament to an unhealthy lifestyle. Tacking between Speaking Unto Nation and Westminster’s most fattening expense-account eating billets, Boulton has long been the softest of touches.

And now, suddenly, twice in one day, he loses it! First with Alastair Campbell, professional liar and spin minister. And then with little Ben Bradshaw, the ghastliest and minciest of Mandelson’s horrible accolytes.

Sky will now give their £800,000 a year political editor a ‘rest’ I should imagine, after the rigours of the campaign.

But just as it is called a gaffe when a politician tells the truth, it is also the case that journalists who occupy such high-profile berths as Adam must never, ever be allowed to call a spade a shovel.

There was a glimpse yesterday of Adam’s youthful jouissance, before he became a complete establishment patsy. A reporter who dares to answer back a toad like Campbell is a rare beast. I should imagine that if Adam returns he will have promised his bosses that he has learned how to control himself.

A smarmy performance

A smarmy and disingenuous performance by Michael Grade on Channel 4 News last night. The organisation of which he is the executive chairman, ITV, has behaved in a blatantly corrupt way. Nearly £8 million has been, in effect, stolen from viewers. But nobody will be fired. Grade has always been a self-regarding, pompous shit*. Don’t forget he was in charge at the BBC when that august institution was similarly defrauding its viewers (although on a lesser scale). Now he is exposed as the man who has concluded, pace his interview with Jon Snow, that despite a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public, nobody must pay the price (other than ITV’s shareholders). He’s wrong. ITV has been engaged in organised crime. Taking money under false pretenses is called fraud. The following question presents itself: where are the police?

*Expletive chosen carefully – Grade will know why.